Planetary health is public health
The White House is hosting the first Food, Nutrition and Health conference since 1969 — the perfect opportunity to revisit a USDA policy that excluded sustainability from federal dietary guidelines.
The Biden administration announced May 4 it will host a conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, the first held at the White House since the Nixon administration. Now widely seen as a landmark event, the 1969 conference on Food, Nutrition and Health produced recommendations that influenced federal food and nutrition policy on school lunches, supplemental nutrition programs and food labeling for decades to come.
With this new conference, the Biden administration has a similar opportunity to break new ground. It’s the right time to correct an Obama-era decision to exclude sustainability from the federal dietary guidelines.
Since 2015, there has been even more research documenting the connection between diet, health and climate change. Climate action is needed even more urgently now too, making this the perfect time to correct course and acknowledge the well-documented link between planetary and public health, by recommending that sustainability be incorporated into federal nutrition recommendations.
Prior to adoption of the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, scientists on the USDA advisory committee advised that sustainability be considered as a factor in developing the next set of recommendations. With Tufts researcher Miriam Nelson at the helm, the committee of nutrition scientists argued that plant-based diets are healthier, both for the public and the planet. As a result, the draft new guidelines suggested curbing “red and processed meat consumption.”
The meat industry pushed back. And — as covered by Politico at the time — not just the meat industry, but advocates for a meat-forward diet. Ultimately, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack — yes, also the sitting USDA Secretary — overruled the USDA’s own advisory committee, writing that sustainability was outside the scope of the dietary guidelines.
The researcher who led the committee at the time disagreed. From a Harvard School of Public Health blog summarizing her public remarks:
Nelson said that food security has always been part of the DGA. She said, “You can’t have food security without a sustainable diet. Therefore, food sustainability is in scope.”
Food system policies do not exist in isolation. Dietary guidelines influence public demand, which in turn influences what farmers grow, and both are key to climate action on agriculture emissions. As WRI behavioral scientist Stacy Blondin told me in reporting for Vox:
You can’t tell farmers to grow more nuts and tomatoes and less animal feed if there’s no consumer demand for it, and you can’t tell consumers to eat a wider variety of fruits and vegetables if they can’t actually find them at the grocery store. “There’s no one silver bullet,” she adds.
As documented again in the latest IPCC report, healthy diets are also plant-based diets, and policies encouraging wider adoption of plant-based or plant-forward diets can be an effective tool for climate mitigation.
Global warming causes severe damage to crops and livestock farms, which in turn affects food security, and that in turn is deeply intertwined with public health. Living near livestock production or in a community with higher rates of slaughterhouse work is also associated with worse health outcomes — yet another example of the many spillover effects of animal agriculture.
These connections are all so well-documented that it’s clear Vilsack got it wrong in 2015. With this upcoming conference, the Biden administration has an opportunity to recommend a correction to that error in policymaking, and incorporate sustainability into all future dietary recommendations.
While this may sound like a long shot — especially given Vilsack’s job leading the US Dairy Export Council during the intervening years between his two stints as USDA Secretary — it also could be an opportunity for the Biden administration to make at least a little headway on climate policy (maybe quietly) as other more ambitious actions have failed.
What I’m Reading
Where forests disappeared last year, in one chart, Vox, Benji Jones
How Americans love of beef is helping destroy the Amazon rainforest, The Washington Post, Terrence McCoy and Júlia Ledur
Methane emissions from cows spotted from space for the first time, New Scientist, Adam Vaughan
Hits and Misses: What I cooked for my not-so-vegan family
Hits: I had some leftover fresh basil from making nut-free vegan pesto (sub seeds and a bit of nooch for nuts and parm), and a few cans of coconut cream plus one tin of Maesri red curry paste (the best, and yes, it’s vegan), so I decided to make up a vegan version of Thai red chicken curry with basil. I can’t say this was the fastest recipe nor the most authentic, but it was quite good. Now, I use my convection roast to make a crispy chicken-like tofu, but you can also fry it or air fry it. So my first step is to turn my oven on convection roast at 400, shred my extra firm tofu into pieces and toss with a bit of cornstarch. Place in the oven on a very lightly-greased cookie sheet with parchment paper. Then, in a medium saucepan, heat up about half of your Maesri on medium heat, and add 2 cans of coconut cream (you can play around with coconut milk and veg broth if you want to reduce your coconut fat intake, an endeavor that does not interest me in the slightest) and let simmer. Meanwhile, heat a wok on pretty high heat (a 7 on my trusty induction), fry up some garlic in a neutral oil, and then stir-fry your veg. I sliced up red pepper and mushrooms, but you can substitute whatever you like in a curry. Stir fry the veg until cooked but still crispy, then tip it into the simmering curry. Check on your tofu, it should be lightly browned by now. Pull it out at this point. Then, with your wok on med-high/high, add the rest of your curry paste and some neutral oil. Fry up the tofu until crispy. Then add to your curry with the handful of basil, right before you serve it with rice.
Misses: I made one of those three or four ingredient cookies from Instagram and I found them largely inedible. I have to say, I think we in the vegan community may be asking too much of overripe bananas these days. Sure, they’re great in a quick bread or even a cake but they cannot carry an entire category of pâtisserie on their own.
TAYLOR ARMSTRONG SAYS ENOUGH.
I am mildly curious to hear what arises from this H/N/H conference at the WF, and remain the same about the banana cookies - because gosh, those few ingredient things *can* work out, and sometimes simple really is the best....but....sometimes not : )